Golf Club of Texas gradually improves its game

Updated 1:38 am, Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Upscale apartments are being built near holes No. 5 through No. 7 at Golf Club of Texas, located about 20 minutes west of downtown.

Upscale apartments are being built near holes No. 5 through No. 7 at Golf Club of Texas, located about 20 minutes west of downtown.

Photo: Richard Oliver, San Antonio Express-News

Golf Club of Texas gradually improves its game

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On a recent chilly, drippy day at Golf Club of Texas, general manager Matt Fawkes steered a golf cart off a path and onto a fairway. There, in discolored patches of dark green, clumps of pesky dallisgrass weeds were scattered.

Fawkes shook his head in irritation.

“So tough to eradicate them,” he said. “But I'm going to start with hole one and make it almost perfect.”

The notoriously stubborn wild plants aside, overseers Fawkes and Southern Golf Properties are making progress. The far West Side course, in major disrepair just three years ago, is showing promise again in returning to the destination status it enjoyed when it opened in 2000.

Designed by Texas-based architects Roy Bechtol and Randy Russell, with famed player Lee Trevino providing input, the Golf Club of Texas stretches more than 7,000 yards from the back tips. The layout is located roughly 20 minutes from downtown San Antonio.

Southern Golf, which includes John Junker and Bryan Gathright as partners, took over management of the embattled property in 2009. Earlier, owner Gil Hodge had reclaimed the course from defunct HollyHills Development, which had failed to follow through on purchasing the facility near his Briggs Ranch Golf Club in 2005.

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“We have more to do,” Briggs Ranch president Carter Speer said. “We have big plans for the golf course — improve the greens, the fairways, the rough — to get it back to where it was a few years ago.”

The Golf Club of Texas has benefited from adjacent construction of 800 upscale apartments by Dallas-based Westin Rim Property Services. The company, which also built similar exclusive units near TPC San Antonio, has worked with Hodge to upgrade the entry road, parking lot and clubhouse at the course.

Speer said the company is making the investments with hopes that an improved Golf Club of Texas will prove to be a lure for those moving into the apartments, expected to be completed in coming months next to four holes on site.

“They would like us to bring it up a notch or two,” he said. “And they're helping and assisting in that.”

Added Junker: “We'll have a captive market next to the course.”

Working on the semi-private course itself has proved a bit more problematic. Fawkes, a New York native who also has served as a head pro and manager at elite facilities in Florida, New York and Wyoming, said the challenge has been improving a layout “that had basically been abandoned for a number of years.”

Added Fawkes, 45: “It was as bad as I've seen a course. You take steps six months out to prevent problems six months later. None of those had been accomplished.”

Today, however, the course has seen gradual improvement in most areas, with a resulting uptick in the number of rounds played. After seeing a little more than 20,000 tee times in 2012, Southern Golf is targeting 40,000 rounds or more per year in the future.

“It was kind of the destination venue for tournaments and events,” said Junker, whose company also manages Casa Blanca Golf Course in Laredo, Club at Colony Creek in Victoria and Riverhill Country Club in Kerrville. “I think it is going to be that again.”